Survey of livestock salmon, a thriving industry responsible for important environmental and societal problems, which makes the fortune of Norway. Breathtaking … and appetite.
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This Atlantic Salmon Ode will not appeal to everyone. Vegetarians could be disappointed. The author, Albert Knechtel, said a vibrant tribute to this muscular animal, capable of undertaking a long journey in the ocean, then to cross multiple obstacles to reassemble the river where it was born. But the documententarist never considers to save this valiant athlete a pathetic end, hung on the line of a fisherman.
In Norway, there would remain 530,000 wild salmon, while nearly 400 million are raised in floating cages in the fjords. Should there, therefore, be based on fish farming to preserve the animal, emblematic of the country? From this angle, it is the consumers who risk digesting through the rosé pavement placed on their plate.
Because the conditions in which these animals grow in marine farms are far from serving the resplendent nature image that Norway would like to promote. It is one of the worst industrial farms, explains in substance Ulrich Pulg, from the Norce Institute, in Bergen: “Nearly 20% of the salmon die in their enclosures, it would be unacceptable in hog farms or of cattle. “In 2018, about 50 million salmon succumbed to overpopulation and diseases.
Always produce more
Between images of the magnificent fjords and relentless figures, the documentary provides a unconsecrated table of the second economic sector of Norway, after that of oil. It gives the measure of this very “good furnhere”, as the title says. At Oslo Airport, not an international flight of passengers does not take off without a loading of salmon in the borrowings, welcomes the director of the freight. He wishes only one thing: the ever-increasing development and industrialization of salmon farming in his country.
In January 2020, exports reached 88 million tonnes, 3% greater than 2019, worth 677 million euros, a jump of 21%. And the government encourages movement, by massively granting new concessions on the coast (more than 1,400 in 2019).
To produce more, Norwegian firms are trying into the Pacific. The film provides a cooling overview of the working conditions on the Chilean coast, where fifty deaths were identified among the employees in seven years. The industry leaves on-site a serious marine pollution, while exporting almost all of its production, too expensive for local markets. “Here, Norwegian companies do everything they are forbidden in their country. They behave like settlers”, accuses Juan Carlos Cardenas, a veterinarian who has been fighting for twenty years against the social consequences they impose.
In his last part, the author gets a little in useless digressions. Its purpose would be easily from the recipe of the escutcheon of the sorrel of the prestigious Troisgros restaurant, in Roanne (Loire) – who striped it from his card – or the evocation rather ill explained an attempt to repopulate a tributary of the Rhine, Germany. The latest images, however, are the blow: they are turned into the virgin landscapes of Patagonia, on which the salmon farming will love.